Marge

May 20, 2011

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Pie. if you've been around here much in the last few months, you know that I make pie. A lot of pie. And I'm particularly excited to share this pie with you today because it helped me break out of a rut. A pie rut. A baking rut. A Marge inspiration rut.

February 24, 2011

So Marge. A few of you have asked how things are going. I love that. Thank you. Things are plugging along. I'm adding another farmer's market onto the weekend docket in a month or so and testing some new pie recipes. It's good. It's all good. But I have to say: when it's 38 degrees, rainy, and "ski week" for the kids in school (don't ask--it's a California thing) the market is pretty darn slow. That was the case last weekend. And I don't blame people. If I wasn't working, you couldn't have paid me to get off the couch in that weather. It was a pretty surreal experience though: baking a lot of pie and having very few customers come through the market. I gave some slices away to local businesses, telling them all about Marge. They were thrilled. Pie makes people very happy. I made some last minute pie deals at the end of the day. And then I got smart.

January 11, 2011

I've spent three weeks baking in my commercial kitchen for Marge. I'm still running around doing what feels like hundreds of errands each week, but things are starting to become a bit more streamlined. I've done two farmer's markets and a few great local events. I'm meeting lots of new folks who live nearby, making friends with other vendors, and oftentimes selling out before the market even ends. For me Saturday mornings are like a big ol' bake sale and I couldn't imagine anything else I'd rather be doing. Friday nights, however, are a much different story.
The night before the farmer's market always brings about many hours of baking, packaging, usually burning myself once or twice, occasionally getting aluminum foil caught in the convection oven (lesson learned: no aluminum foil in the convection oven!), witnessing occasional drug deals out back, listening to old classic rock on the radio, talking to myself, pacing. And more pacing. For the past few weeks, there's been very little sleep, lots of anxiety, and questioning if this is really how I want to spend every Friday night into eternity.

November 30, 2010

I've been a big tease lately. I mention secrets and new endeavors without as much as a hint. Truthfully, I wasn't doing this to build suspense or for any other weird reason. I just have this theory that it's bad luck to say you're starting something unless you're pretty darn sure you're starting something. So today... I'm pretty darn sure that Marge is actually happening. Health permits are filed. Logos and menus are finished and Sam is working his magic on a lovely, more detailed website.

November 17, 2010

Last week at my favorite yoga class, the instructor started talking about the concept of Remembering Forward. It'd been a long tough class and my mind was wandering over to latte land, but as I half listened, the concept grabbed me. It goes something like this: Imagine one year from today. So it'd be November 17, 2011. Now imagine one area in your life that you want to work on or make a change in. This could be your relationship, a friendship, work. Anything. Think about one specific change that you'd like to see happen in that area, and then you turn to a friend or your partner and you play the 'Remembering Forward' game. You're now in November 2011 and that change you wanted to see happen? It did. Your dialogue with your friend or partner makes it come alive.
For example, when I was listening to the instructor talk about the concept I started running through what mine would look like: